Lesser-Known Tongues Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mali

Mali is situated in West Africa, and Bamanankan is spoken here as well as in surrounding countries such as Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire. In Mali, people of many ethnicities, not just Bamana, speak Bamanankan, and it is used as a lingua franca throughout the country, whose official language is French. The capital is Bamako, which means "crocodile river", as stated in the question.

Bamanankan has approximately 12 million speakers, and is a tonal language, with two tones. It is usually written in the Latin alphabet, although some people do write it in the Arabic and N'Ko scripts. Due to the influence of French, the language contains many loanwords from French. Bamanankan and the Bamana people have a very rich collection of oral literature, including many songs usually of a heroic nature.

Answer: Arabic

Today's Cham people are descended from those of the Champa kingdom, which was situated where Vietnam now is, all the way from the early centuries AD until annexation by Vietnam in 1832. Currently they live in various southeastern Asian countries, including smaller numbers in countries like Thailand and Malaysia as well as the main groups in Cambodia and Vietnam.

Cham is an Australasian language, of the Malayo-Polynesian branch, and has approximately a quarter of a million native speakers. The differences in script are based on religion; most Cham people in Cambodia are Muslims and so the Western dialect is often written in Arabic (although some use the Western variant of the Cham alphabet). Most speakers of Eastern Cham are Hindu and use the Eastern variant of the Cham script. Sources differ on whether these languages are truly separate, or are dialects.

Answer: Semitic

The Semitic languages form a branch of the Afro-Asiatic family, and the more commonly known ones include Arabic, Hebrew, and Amharic. Tigre is more specifically within the Ethiopic group of Semitic languages, and is believed to be derived from an ancient language called Ge'ez (the same name as the script still used for Tigre), which is used in liturgical contexts within an Ethiopian and an Eritrean church.

The Tigre people are mostly Muslim, which is why the Tigre language is often written in Arabic script; Christians of the Tigre people tend to use the Ge'ez script. Ge'ez script is syllabic, and is used for various Semitic languages as well as Tigre.

The language has about one million native speakers.

Answer: Venda

While Russian is the official language throughout the whole country of Russia, these others only have official status within those particular republics - Russia has administrative divisions other than republics, but only republics are allowed to give a language official status.

Altai is a Turkic language official in the Altai Republic. It has two main dialects, Northern and Southern Altai, which are sometimes regarded as different enough to be separate languages. It has relatively few native speakers, around 50,000.

Komi is a Uralic language official in the Komi Republic. Like Altai, it is sometimes regarded as comprising several languages rather than one language having various dialects. It has about a quarter of a million native speakers.

Tatar is a Turkic language official in Tatarstan, spoken quite widely throughout some European and Asian countries such as China, Ukraine, and Finland. It has around 5.5 million native speakers.

Each of these languages uses the Cyrillic alphabet, although others have been used, such as Arabic (for Tatar) and Latin.

(Venda is a Bantu language with about a million native speakers and official status in South Africa. It is written in the Latin alphabet.)

Answer: Mexico

Sonora is a state in the country of Mexico, and the Seri language is spoken in just two villages, Punta Chueca and El Desemboque, on its coast. In 2006, it was established that there remain about one thousand Seri people in the region, speaking the Seri language. The Seri people have fiercely held onto their culture and language in spite of the influences of Mexican and Spanish culture.

It is not known where the name Seri comes from; the Seri people call themselves Comcaac (in the plural) or Cmiique (in the singular), and they call their language "Cmiique litom", which means "That which a Seri person speaks".

The Hokan hypothesis was an attempt to group together various languages in California, Arizona, and areas of Mexico. Although some members of this "family" do seem distantly related, there is little to no evidence for Seri's inclusion.

Answer: Dungan

The Dungan language, being a Sinitic tongue, has some mutual intelligibility with Mandarin Chinese, and is spoken throughout central Asia. It has around 40,000 native speakers. It has two main dialects, one of which has four tones and another that has three. The number of Dungan people speaking the Dungan language as their mother tongue has steadily decreased over the years.

The Dungan people call themselves Hui, as they are descended from the Hui people of China, but are now regarded by some as a separate population by geography. They are Hanafi Muslims.

Answer: Namibia

Khoekhoe has about 200,000 native speakers spread across Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa, and is spoken by three ethnic groups, the Damara, the Nama, and the Haillam. The language is often known as either Nama or Damara after these groups. It is the most widespread Khoisan language, a term that denotes those with clicks rather than a true linguistic family.

It is thought that the Nama first spoke Khoekhoe, which was picked up by the Damara people in Botswana. These two groups migrated separately to Namibia, taking the Khoekhoe language with them. It was picked up by the third group, the Haillam, who previously spoke a !Kung dialect.

Although spoken in three countries, Khoekhoe only has a recognized status in Namibia. Some students are taught in it, and it is used for radio broadcasts.

Answer: Yurok

Esperanto is undoubtedly the best-known international auxiliary language, invented by L.L. Zamenhof, a physician, in the late 19th century. Zamenhof dreamed of a world without war and developed Esperanto, whose name means "one who hopes", to help foster peace between different nations with different tongues. It now has many speakers all over the world, estimated up to two million by some sources. Astonishingly, Esperanto now has approximately one thousand native speakers.

Interlingua is based on Latin and is widely understood passively by native speakers of Romance languages. It was developed in the 1940s by the International Auxiliary Language Association, and is often used as a stepping stone to learning Romance languages, as it is simpler and easier to pick up.

Volapük was developed in 1880 by a Roman Catholic priest, Johann Martin Schleyer, who dreamed that God had tasked him with creating an international language. Its vocabulary is based mostly on English, with contributions from others such as German, but it doesn't really resemble any of these. Its verb structure is so convoluted that each verb can have over 1500 inflections!

On the other hand, Yurok is an Algic language, spoken only by a very small population (fewer than twenty) in California, USA. As its last native speaker died in 2013, efforts have been underway to revive this endangered language. Yurok means "downriver".

Answer: Solomon Islands

Anuta is a very small island, one of the smallest inhabited islands of Polynesia, with a diameter of only 750 m. Its population is around 300, yet due to the small size of the island, this is one of the world's highest population densities. It is geographically isolated, with very little contact with the outside world; most contact is with an infrequent ship from the capital of the Solomon Islands, Honiara.

The Anuta language is closely related to that of the island's nearest neighbor, Tikopia, and is one of the world's smallest languages, with only eight consonants: p, t, k, m, n, ng, v and r. The Anuta people form strong bonds, with traditional family structure being less emphasized; everyone is family. The concept of "aropa" is important to these people, and is about compassion and sharing the island's finite resources with others.

Answer: Ladino

As well as Judaeo-Spanish, Ladino is sometimes called Judezmo, and is derived from Castilian Spanish. When the Sephardic Jews of Spain were expelled in 1492, they took their language with them which has developed into Ladino, which is now spoken by communities of Sephardic Jews all over the world, including in Israel, Turkey, the USA, and France.

It is written in the Hebrew alphabet, specifically the Rashi script, but many people these days write it with the Latin alphabet. Ladino is endangered, as native speakers today are few, and many of their children are not learning it. It is undergoing revival attempts, mainly in Sephardic music.